The present invention relates to wireless local area networks and particularly to assigning radio channels therein.
Wireless local area networks (WLAN) comprise terminals, such as portable computers provided with WLAN cards and communicating on a radio wave via a base station. A base station creates a wireless local area network around itself whose coverage is about 20 to 50 m. In Europe, wireless local area networks have 13 radio channels at their disposal, one of which the base station determines to be used for local area network communication. Each wireless local area network also has to have a special network name, which is a common identifier of the base station and the terminals coupled to the network.
A solution is previously known, wherein base stations of wireless local area networks are provided with certain default settings at the manufacturing stage, whereby for example the same radio channel is selected as the default value for all base stations.
The problem in the above solution is interference between adjacent wireless local area networks. For example, in an apartment house environment, several separate wireless local area networks may be located at short distances from each other. If in this case the same radio channel is set to be used by the base stations, a situation arises wherein interference impairs the performance of the networks. In this case, the default channel is overloaded and the other channels are not used. End users are not always capable of changing channel settings and are not aware of the settings of surrounding interfering networks. This problem exists particularly in a home and small office environment. In larger companies, the situation is better since networks and channel assignment are generally carefully planned. Furthermore, an expert IT organization often maintains the networks, whereby no problems arise in reassignment of channels.